By Jessica Zagacki
Racism and oppression need to be exposed through writing, and that’s exactly what Claudia Rankine is doing.
The Helene Fortunoff Theater in the Monroe Lecture Center was packed on Tuesday, Oct. 24 with enthusiastic readers and writers who were eager to listen to renowned author Claudia Rankine at this month’s “Great Writers, Great Readers” event.
Rankine has written five poetry collections, one of which is her highly successful composition “Citizen: An American Lyric” that consists of multiple anthologies, two plays and even video collaborations. She is not only the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” award but has also been awarded several noteworthy awards for “Citizen” including the PEN Open Book Award, the PEN Literary Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the NAACP Award.
Rankine is famous for including the second person in her work, placing the reader in a position of either the victim or the culprit. It’s a very powerful technique she uses to get the reader engaged in the writing and understand the point of view.
The structure of Rankine’s dialogue for the night was a discussion on the art in “Citizen” as well as a reading of excerpts that she wrote for this poetry collection. She discussed some of the artists’ work and how they depict many issues of bigotry and hatred that are often spread towards minorities, specifically African-Americans.
“Citizen” uses poetics that are very visual and documentary in style to portray the daily struggles and racism aimed at African-Americans.
Rankine mentioned that in cases of police officers shooting unarmed black people ,when they’re asked why they shot them, the police officers usually say that they don’t know before ever admitting they were scared.
“I think their own imagination has been formed by the culture, and the demonizing of black people over hundreds of years has taken root in white imagination, so white people don’t even know why they think the things they think,” Rankine said.
Perhaps the most powerful part of Rankine’s discussion was the picture and the words that she ended her presentation on. She finished up the night showing the most difficult photo for her to get for “Citizen.” It is an emotional image of a lynching of African Americans. She discussed how the real problem is not the image, but it’s the people in the picture – the people doing the lynchings.
Rankine then made a profound point when she talked about these people who organized the lynchings like the one in the photo, saying that she’s interested in “those people who had children who now are in our government, who are in our Senate, who are in our classrooms, who are policemen, who are everywhere.” It’s a scary thought, but there is much truth to it. People aren’t born racist. Many times, racism is passed down from the beliefs of older generations, and it’s a trend that needs to stop.
Claudia Rankine is a strong activist against systems of racism and oppression. She is able to advocate her beliefs through the power of her writing, shining a light on issues that plague our society and need positive change.